Hayao Miyazaki Coming Out Of Retirement Again

Hayao Miyazaki Coming Out Of Retirement Again

By Angie Han/Nov. 14, 2016 9:00 am EST

Miyazaki dropped the big news during a Japanese TV special titled, funnily enough, The Man Who Is Not Done: Hayao Miyazaki (via Anime News Network). In it, he revealed he was dissatisfied with Boro the Caterpillar, a twelve-minute short for the Ghibli Museum. So he’s presented a project proposal for a feature-length film, which Miyazaki hopes to complete before the 2020 Olympics in Toyko. As for the Boro the Caterpillar short, it’s still on — it’ll be finished in about a year and will screen exclusively at the Ghibli Museum in Tokyo.

While the longer version of Boro the Caterpillar has not officially been greenlit, it’s hard to imagine Miyazaki getting turned down. Miyazaki, who has already begun work on animation for the project, noted that he will be around 80 years old when the Boro the Caterpillar movie is finished. The filmmaker has been planning the story of Boro the Caterpillar for about 20 years and although specific details are still scarce, he describes it as “a story of a tiny, hairy caterpillar, so tiny that it may be easily squished between your fingers.”